How the 1970s shaped the Hollywood blockbuster movie
By Talal Malik, Alpha1Media Founder & Writer-Producer
How did ‘The Godfather’, its sequel and ‘Rocky’ help influence eight of of the top 10 highest grossing films at the global box office in 2022 being either franchise sequels or superhero movies?
Fifty years ago, on March 27, 1973, Hollywood film producer Albert S. Ruddy, now more famous due to the Paramount+ series, ‘The Offer, walked up to the stage at the 45th Academy Awards to collect the Best Picture Oscar for ‘The Godfather’. Based on the best-selling book by Mario Puzo about the Mafia in the U.S., the film was co-written and directed by Italian-American auteur Francis Ford Coppola, and upon its release in March 1972, had been deemed a veritable blockbuster, making $291 million at the box office on a $7.2 million budget. Coppola returned to direct ‘The Godfather Part II’ in December 1974, which not only won the Best Picture Oscar at the 47th Academy Awards in 1975, but also made around $93 million on a $13 million budget.
But ‘The Godfather Part II’ had two particular distinctions, as it was the first studio sequel to identify with a number in its title, and also the first sequel to win a Best Picture Oscar. These two films, regarded as some of the greatest films ever made, and notably without any special effects, may, inadvertently, been the start of the blockbuster franchise that dominates Hollywood cinema today.
Though some of Hollywood’s greatest male actors, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, starred in ‘The Godfather’ and its sequel, it is actually a Hollywood actress in the film who acts as a link to the evolution of the blockbuster franchise. Italian-American actress Talia Shire played Connie Corleone, the daughter of Marlon Brando’s initial Godfather, Vito, and the sister of Al Pacino’s succeeding Godfather, Michael. For her role as Connie in ‘The Godfather Part II’, Shire was also nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1975, and would reprise the role in its third installment in 1990. Talia Shire was born Talia Coppola, the real-life sister of Francis, who used her marital name following her marriage to composer David Shire.
‘The Godfather’ opens with the wedding of Shire’s character presided over by her father, as played by Brando, dressed in the now iconic-tuxedo with the red rose carnation as a a boutonniere. Coincidentally, Shire’s romantic lead in her next film would be an actor who had auditioned to be a background artist, or extra, in the wedding scene but had been told by casting agents that he did not look Italian enough. In 1976, Shire was cast in another Italian-American role, as a pet-shop clerk, Adrian Pennino, in a story set primarily in Philadelphia. The film was written and starred another Italian-American writer and actor, Sylvester Stallone, and the film was called ‘Rocky’, after its title character, Rocky Balboa, a boxer nicknamed ‘The Italian Stallion.’
Released in 1976, coinciding with the Bicentennial Anniversary of the founding of the USA in 1776, ‘Rocky’ was made for around $1 million, but became the highest grossing film of the year with $225 million at the box office. On March 28, 1977, Hollywood film producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler walked up to the stage at the 49th Academy Awards to collect the Best Picture Oscar for ‘Rocky’, inviting its Oscar-nominated writer and star, Stallone, to join them. To bring it full circle, Shire, in her role as Adrian, was this time nominated for the Best Actress Oscar.
If ‘The Godfather Part II’ was the first studio sequel to use a number in its title, ‘Rocky’, and its writer-star, Stallone, would scale that usage. If ‘Rocky’ in 1976 saw him lose his match against Apollo Creed, the Heavyweight Boxing Champion portrayed by African-American actor Carl Weathers in tribute to boxing icon Muhammad Ali, ‘Rocky II’ in 1979 would witness Rocky win and become the champ himself, followed by four successive sequels till 2006. A spin-off franchise titled ‘Creed’ was launched in 2015, with the third installment released in 2023. Stallone himself would have other franchises he would lead, including starring in ‘First Blood’ as John Rambo in 1982, ‘The Expendables’ in 2010, and ‘Escape Plan’ in 2013, helping him become the first and only actor to have a number 1 film at the U.S. box office over six decades.
As Shire had had a critical supporting role in ‘The Godfather’ and its sequel that helped evolve the Hollywood blockbuster franchise, there would be a supporting actor who would have a similar role in ‘Rocky’, but is much lesser known. That actor is Thayer David, who portrayed the boxing promoter, George “Miles” Jergens, in the film. He was responsible for eliciting some of the best lines in the film, such as the the memorable proposition, “Would you be interested in fighting Apollo Creed for the World Heavyweight Championship?”, or asking Rocky, “Do you believe America is the land of opportunity?”, which Rocky affirms, and then stating, “Rocky, it’s the chance of a lifetime.” From that critical supporting role in ‘Rocky’, David would then have a critical supporting role in another film in the 1970s which directly reflects the blockbuster franchise cinema today.
In 1977, 15 years after Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created Spider-Man, Marvel Comics published a style guide for licensing and merchandising guidelines for the superhero, with illustrations by artist John Romita Sr. helping the character become a global icon. When most people are asked today when was the first Spider-Man film released in cinemas, they would most likely say 2002, when Sam Raimi directed Tobey Maguire as the Marvel superhero and his alter ego, Peter Parker, in the Columbia-Tristar Sony Pictures blockbuster, ‘Spider-Man’. However, that is not strictly accurate. In fact, it was in 1977 that ‘Spider-Man’, the first Columbia film, had its cinematic theatrical release in Europe and Australia, but not North America, and starred actor Nicholas Hammond as the superhero, serving as the pilot to the 1978 television series, ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’. The film also did have two sequels, ‘Spider-Man Strikes Back’ in 1978 and ‘Spider-Man: The Dragon’s Challenge’ in 1981. The prime villain in this first Spider-Man film was named Edward Byron or Guru, and he was played by David, in his penultimate film role before his death in 1978.
American auteur Frank D. Gilroy once described David as “the most widely educated and best-read actor” he had ever met. To bring it full circle to today, one of Gilroy’s sons, ‘Nightcrawler’ auteur, Dan Gilroy, in 2015 spoke of independent film as being one of the “holdouts against the tsunami of superhero movies that have swept over this industry.” The superhero movies of today would not have existed without the blockbuster franchises whose potential emerged in the 1970s.
Coppola was a part of a 1970s moai of technically-proficient and film-educated young American filmmakers, later titled the ‘Movie Brats’, which included the likes of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma, who often worked on each other’s films and also helped critique them. In 1975, Spielberg as an auteur would help give birth to the specifically-summer blockbuster, with ‘Jaws’, produced on a budget of $9 million which made $476.5 million, becoming the highest grossing movie of all time. Two years later, Lucas, an auteur as well as a producer, would make ‘Star Wars’, trumping ‘Jaws’ as the highest grossing movie of all time, until Spielberg, adding his first producer credit, would make ‘E.T. The Extra Terrestrial’ in 1982. Lucas for ‘Star Wars’ negotiated that he, rather than the studio, would have complete ownership over the licensing and merchandising rights for the film.
If Coppola had been the first to use a numeral in the sequel, Spielberg added the summer dimension and Lucas the merchandising aspect to the blockbuster franchise. The final element missing was added in before the decade’s end, when in 1978, Puzo was hired to write another script and Brando once again to play a critical father figure as they had done at the start of the decade. For this paternal role of 10 minutes of screen time, Brando had initially suggested to the film’s producer, Ilya Salkind, that his character should either be visualised as a green suitcase or a bagel with his voice. Brando would actually physically portray the character of ‘Jor-El’, father to ‘Kal-El’, more commonly known as ‘Superman’, the first DC superhero film released globally starring Christopher Reeve. It became the second highest grossing film of 1978, finally adding the superhero element to the blockbuster franchise at the end of the 1970s.
Undoubtedly, the blockbuster franchise is ubiquitous in global popular cinema today, with eight of the highest-grossing top 10 films at the global box office in 2022 either being franchise sequels such as ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ and ‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’, Marvel superhero franchise sequels such as ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’, ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ and ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ or a DC superhero franchise starter, ‘The Batman’. Blockbuster auteur James Cameron’s ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ has made over $2 billion globally, and the Tom Cruise sequel, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, made just under $1.5 billion, helping bring audiences back into the cinemas, but both of them were once linked to the first ‘Spider-Man’ movie since the franchise starring Hammond. Getting his major outbreak role in Coppola’s ‘The Outsiders’ in 1983, Cruise was touted as the Marvel superhero for Joseph Zito’s movie for Cannon Films in 1985 and Cameron wrote a ‘scripment’ for blockbuster production company, Carolco, in 1991, the same year as his first blockbuster hit as an auteur and producer, ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day.’
Blockbuster franchises have been catalysts in bringing audiences back to the cinema, as acknowledged by Spielberg who said to Cruise about the performance of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, that he “saved Hollywood” and “might have saved the entire theatrical industry.” But two other auteurs from the 1970s have warned of dangers of the current blockbusters, specifically of superhero franchises, with Scorsese saying “theatres have become theme parks” with his first mentor, Coppola, stating, “it’s the same movie over and over again”, which, to him, is “despicable.” In recognising that the conditions for the evolution of the blockbuster franchise were actually created in the prime era of the Movie Brats, today’s cinematic elder statesmen, key lessons can be learned on how to remedy the concerns, complaints and chagrin they have, and some others share.
The first requirement for anyone in wishing to help transform the film industry, but, in particular, writers and producers, is a general commitment to originality, creativity, innovation, resourcefulness and risk calculation. These can be known by their opposites such as the derivative, functional, status quo, immobility and ultimately, regret for not taking risks, noting the tagline for ‘Rocky’ as “His whole life was a million to one shot.” Creating original intellectual property, new characters and new stories of calibre will eventually, but always, find an audience. Puzo created ‘The Godfather’, Stallone created ‘Rocky’, Lee and Ditko created ‘Spider-Man’, and even today, Cameron created ‘Avatar’ and Christopher Nolan created ‘Inception’ and ‘Tenet’.
The second is that the script and story are the initial and absolute priority. Both ‘The Godfather’ and ‘Rocky’ were not envisaged as franchises initially, with there being no book sequel by Puzo and Stallone writing the original script, but were, in fact, just compelling stories with robust scripts. As Tom Shone, author of 2004’s ‘Blockbuster’ states as a remedy, “they would have to go back to the business of making movies essentially; that’s the difficult one, that’s the one you have to put in the years of work, developing scripts and working on them with producers.” So conscientiousness, perseverance and patience is required to make films worth their legacy on celluloid.
The fourth is the return of the producer as film entrepreneur. The Best Picture Oscar is awarded to the film’s producers, which meant that only Ruddy collected it for ‘The Godfather’ and Chartoff and Winkler collected it for ‘Rocky’, before inviting Stallone on stage as the visionary creative. While there are many different types of producers today, the most critical is the producer responsible for developing the script with the writer and director, raising the finance for the movie, through to production and distribution. The producer is the one who can essentially buy the rights for a film or characters, such as Cannon Films in 1985 buying the film rights for ‘Spider-Man’ for $225,000, then bought by Carolco in 1990 for $5 million, with Cameron paid $3 million to auteur and produce.
The fifth is welcoming the challenge to create a special effects-free blockbuster. All of those 8 highest grossing blockbusters in 2022 relied on special effects, though a special nod can be given to ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ for Cruise’s principled insistence on using real fighter-jets. Contrast that with ‘The Godfather’ and ‘Rocky’ having no special effects, but with still with those low budgets, yielding blockbuster returns and Oscar-nominations galore. The alternative, as Shone states about using special effects, is that “once you start using them, you’ve got an expensive movie.” If these human-centric films had the potential to be blockbusters that dominated the box office in the 1970s, the opportunity exists to help more such films be commercial blockbusters once again.
The sixth is creative command and control, or imperium. Films are a creative business, but harnessing and not stifling that creativity is a talent when ultimately it is the business side that effectively calls the shots, as in “he who pays the piper, calls the tune.” American auteur Orson Welles infamously said, “I look back on my life and it’s 95% running around trying to raise money to make movies and 5% actually making them.” Welles was the auteur, star and producer in 1941 of his first film, ‘Citizen Kane’, regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. However, from 1951 till his death in 1985, he never produced another film again.
Of course helming the responsibilities of writer, director and producer is not easy, as initially witnessed by the careers of the Movie Brats, and therefore the tension between the commercial and creative must always be balanced. In 1992, Coppola filed for bankruptcy for the third time in nine years, from admittedly-excessive risk-taking in making his films. Lucas, the auteur and producer of ‘Star Wars’ in 1977, moved more in to executive production over the next two decades, only directing his first film in 22 years with 1999’s ‘Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace’, a fact lamented by Coppola. In 1991, Cameron finally got the opportunity to be the auteur and producer of his own major film, ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ through producer Mario Kassar at Carolco, which he repeated at all-time blockbuster status with ‘Titanic’ in 1997, declaring himself “king of the world” at the 1998 Oscars, and ‘Avatar’ in 2009. More recently, Nolan has, apart from ‘Man of Steel’ in 2013, been the auteur and producer of all eight of his last films since ‘The Prestige’ in 2006, demonstrating the potential of identifying and scaling talented auteurs with creative command and control capabilities.
The seventh is that constriction can lead to creativity, largesse can lead to laziness. The dominance of blockbuster sized-budgets, with corporate support, means that films can sometimes become more formulaic and decreed by committee, leading to audience boredom and fatigue. Contrast that with ‘Rocky’ made for a $1 million which made 225 times its budget at the box office. However, with cinema’s next quantum leap‘ underway, technology is evolving to make films look like blockbusters at a fraction of the cost, which can help propel the human story to the forefront. Even today, there are auteurs who do have imperium that can still maintain that creativity, even at scale. As Shone states, Cameron and Nolan “came out of a incredibly-disciplined low-budget film-making world” and “no matter how expensive they are, Cameron movies or Nolan movies, they never sort of feel wasteful.” It is a great creative and commercial responsibility to be a filmmaker, as Welles once remarked, “A movie in production is the greatest train set a boy could have.”
December 8, 2023, marks the Centennial of when 4,000 light-bulbs first illuminated a set of 45-foot white letters to signify the movie industry’s most famous sign, the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. It is worth remembering that many of those working within the film industry are also part of the audience as well, and so want their craft best represented on the silver screen. An example are marquee A-List actors Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, who recently set up their production company, Artists Equity, to make original commercial films. The greater move to production ushers in thesecond act of their careers, with this year marking 25 years after their Oscar-win for writing the script to ‘Good Will Hunting’, written in emulation of Stallone’s path with ‘Rocky’ in 1976.
Over their careers, Affleck has portrayed DC’s Batman and Marvel’s Daredevil, but also directed Best Picture Oscar-winner ‘Argo’ in 2012, and Damon has starred in the Jason Bourne franchise but also been Oscar-nominated twice for his acting, in 2009’s ‘Invictus’ and 2015’s ‘The Martian’. In 2023, Affleck directs Damon for the first time in ‘Air’, the story behind Nike’s pursuit of a partnership with basketball icon, Michael Jordan. Both, like many others, help to personify the current creative and commercial coexistence needed in the industry to not only survive, but thrive. The Hollywood sign is a beacon of a global popular cinema, and therefore there is a case for optimism in envisaging what cinema it helps to create in the future for global audiences to enjoy, through a return to a rebalancing with more originality and innovation.